Chapter 026: Warning

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The grotesque, oversized infant that Su Cheng tore from the neck of Ye Shenhui looked as if it had been forcibly cut from its mother’s womb before birth—its features were incomplete, its entire body drenched in blood, a horrifying sight to behold. Even a seasoned driver accustomed to the eerie roll of the ghost hearse would have suffered a heart attack at the shock of discovering such a thing hanging from their neck.

“What is this thing?” Ye Shenhui was clearly badly shaken, her face as pale as death. She fought to suppress her terror, refraining from screaming, and pretended to be composed as she sipped a glass of cold water—unaware it was Su Cheng who had ordered it.

“The vengeful spirit of a stillborn child,” Su Cheng replied, shrugging indifferently as he held the monstrous infant. “If I may ask, do you have a boyfriend?”

“Never,” Ye Shenhui replied firmly, shaking her head. Any man who tried to approach her would get his bones broken, let alone have a child with her. This monstrous infant had nothing to do with her.

“That’s strange, then. This vengeful spirit appears to have been nurtured by someone. It seems someone deliberately placed it on you.”

As he spoke, his hand, black as ink, suddenly squeezed. The vengeful spirit, writhing and shrieking in his grasp, instantly burst into a cloud of dark vapor.

Anyone who frequently comes into contact with vengeful spirits will inevitably be affected—prolonged exposure leads to hallucinations, lethargy, and in severe cases, a fatal curse.

Hearing this, Ye Shenhui’s expression grew troubled. No wonder she had been plagued by nightmares lately; she had thought it was just the side effect of playing horror games. Now it was clear someone was deliberately trying to harm her. Thinking further, the death of that team member also seemed suspicious—it was likely someone was targeting the Night God Squad.

“Don’t speak of this to anyone. Also, the next dungeon will open at midnight in two days, at Sensoji Temple in Taito, Tokyo. Don’t be late.”

Ye Shenhui opened the horror game and sent Su Cheng a friend request. Once he accepted, she added him to a temporary team.

Normally, game dungeons are randomly generated for players. However, there are special dungeons that require a token to access.

Clearing such special dungeons yields rewards far superior to ordinary ones; more importantly, there is a chance to obtain rare professional items within them.

Ye Shenhui had paid a steep price to acquire the token needed for this special dungeon. She would not let this opportunity slip away.

“One more thing—I want information on professionals.”

Su Cheng could sense that Ye Shenhui was also a professional and must know something about the game’s professional system.

“Of course, it’s no secret.” Ye Shenhui knew Su Cheng wasn’t yet a professional and didn’t find his question odd. She patiently explained, “Put simply, professionals are like superhumans with powerful abilities.”

“Like superheroes in Marvel movies?”

“You could say that. The profession system in the horror game is extremely complex. According to the intelligence gathered by the Night God Squad, there are already over five hundred different professions open to players. Each has its strengths and weaknesses. For example, my profession is ‘Goddess of War,’ specializing in all kinds of mass-destructive weaponry—very handy in zombie dungeons like ‘Resident Evil.’ But in supernatural dungeons, my abilities don’t amount to much.”

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Since Ye Shenhui had decided to recruit Su Cheng for the team, she hid nothing about her own profession.

“Ordinary players must first trigger a profession quest to become professionals. There are many ways to trigger such quests—some are hidden within dungeons, others require specific items to activate.”

Su Cheng nodded thoughtfully. Just yesterday, Junjin Miike had found a zombie virus in a dungeon, triggering his profession quest and becoming a professional.

The power of professionals was indisputable. If Miike hadn’t revealed such obvious weaknesses after zombification—weaknesses that Su Cheng’s abilities happened to counter—he would have been much harder to defeat.

“Professional items drop rarely in ordinary dungeons, but the drop rate is higher in story dungeons. Sometimes, you might even trigger a powerful elite profession.”

That said, story dungeons are extremely difficult and have a high mortality rate; obtaining a profession item is anything but simple.

“It’s said that professionals can change professions a second time, but only after reaching the Silver rank. At our current level, that’s out of reach.” Ye Shenhui added casually. Most players in this horror game hover around Bronze rank; Silver-level players are exceedingly rare.

As far as she knew, Silver-level players seemed to be restrained in some way, unable to freely use their powers in the real world. Otherwise, with their strength, Tokyo would have been turned upside down already.

By now, Ye Shenhui had lost her appetite after the encounter with the monstrous infant. She transferred a fifty-thousand yen deposit to Su Cheng’s bank account, arranged a time to meet, and left the café.

Night fell. On a quiet street in the Shinjuku district, Su Cheng walked toward his rented apartment, carrying two large bags filled with discounted goods from the supermarket, thoroughly satisfied.

Though he now had some money, he still needed to be frugal. Living costs in Tokyo were high—fifty thousand yen barely covered rent, utilities, some food, and weapon maintenance.

“Huh, when did the streetlights on this road go out?”

As he walked, Su Cheng noticed that the street lamps along the sidewalk had suddenly gone dark.

A chill wind swept through, and not far ahead, several black figures approached.

Strangely, they staggered as if drunk, swaying unsteadily.

When they reached Su Cheng, they suddenly lunged at him.

Several demonic faces, blue and fanged, leered at him, their claws rapidly elongating as they lashed out at his face.

“Vengeful ghosts?”

Su Cheng frowned, but his reaction was swift.

As the ghosts lunged, a flash of steel cut across one of their waists.

The blade’s cold gleam flashed; one vengeful ghost was sliced cleanly in two at the waist.

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The ghostly power infused in the blade erupted—the wound on the vengeful ghost spewed black flames, consuming it in moments, reducing it to a pile of soul ash.

Seeing this, the remaining blue-faced, fanged ghosts showed fear, yet seemed compelled by some unseen force to attack Su Cheng.

A few swift strikes, and they didn’t even touch a hair on Su Cheng’s head before he sent them all to the underworld.

“These vengeful ghosts must be under someone’s control. This incident is a warning… or a threat?” Su Cheng’s expression grew pensive. Clearly, someone didn’t want him teaming up with Ye Shenhui.

Not long after he left, a furtive figure appeared at the scene of Su Cheng’s recent battle.

“Lord Ghost Moon, the ghosts you sent have all been destroyed. It seems the helper Ye Shenhui found is quite capable.” A middle-aged man in a black suit, looking every bit the office worker, dialed a number and briefly reported the situation.

There was a long silence on the other end of the line before a voice replied, “I understand. Keep watching him. If that pack of SCI hounds weren’t watching so closely, the leader would have wiped out the Night God Squad himself by now.”

“Yes, sir.”

The man in the suit hung up and was about to follow when, turning around, he found Su Cheng standing right behind him, gazing at him with a half-smile.

“You…”

The man, caught off guard, instinctively pulled a knife and lunged viciously at Su Cheng.

Su Cheng’s hand instantly turned black as ink. Like lightning, he caught the gleaming blade, then squeezed sharply.

Crack!

The knife shattered in the man’s grasp, while Su Cheng’s hand remained unscathed, not even a scratch.

“Baka na!”

In the depths of his terror, Su Cheng unhesitatingly drove a knife through the man’s chest.

Yet no blood flowed from the wound—his entire body shriveled like a punctured balloon. The next moment, Su Cheng saw a black shadow in the shape of a bat dart from the man’s body and vanish into the night.

So, the man in the suit had merely been a puppet wearing a human disguise.